Jem Calder was born in Cambridge, and lives and works in London. His fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly and Granta, and his debut short story collection, Reward System, was published by Faber in 2022. I Want You to Be Happy is his debut novel.

Lucy

Hello, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Writing Life Podcast.

I’m Lucy, and I’m here today with Jem, who is the author of I Want You To Be Happy.

Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s really exciting to meet you.

 

Jem

Thank you for having me, Lucy. Very, very happy to be here.

 

Lucy

I Want You To Be Happy is out now with Faber, and it’s one of their leading titles at the moment. There’s been a lot of fuss around it that I’ve seen.

What is that, what is that like for you? This must be exciting.

 

Jem

It is nice. I really feel quite happy about it because I put out a short story collection a couple of years ago, also with Faber, and that went well. You know, like it got kind reviews and did fine. But it’s a different order of magnitude putting out a novel. Like a lot more people pay attention to novels. And I just kind of, I was quite excited for more people to read this than I the regular audience that would read short stories. There’s a sort of inbuilt limit with how far short stories tend to travel.

So it’s been really nice. It’s been a really good experience. I’ve done a few interviews and things like that, and I keep on seeing people reading it, so it’s kind of staying present for me in a strange way.

Like I’ve seen it out in the wild quite a lot, people reading it on the train and stuff. So yeah, it’s very, very surreal.

 

Lucy

That must be fun, sitting opposite someone on the train and being like, ‘I wrote that!’ That’s so fun.

Are you somebody who has always written? I’d love to hear a bit about your relationship with writing.

 

Jem

Yeah. It’s a good question.

Yeah, I think I am. Yeah, I definitely remember being very young and writing at the kitchen table and sort of coming up with really long stories.

I was really into sci-fi and fantasy, even when I was very… even I remember being really into sci-fi even before I had read anything that was sci-fi or seen… and, you know, just like seeing VHS boxes and stuff. I was just so curious.

And I would write these really, really long stories. But then I really quit for a good… probably from when I was about 19 to when I was about 24, I don’t think I wrote anything.

I kind of actually completely stepped away from the idea of being a writer and my interest in writing. And throughout my teens, I’d kind of, you know, written on and off. So  yeah, when I was very young, I was really into it. And then, in my mid-20s, I got right back into it and got very serious about it.

I think the real world had set in a bit, and I’d,  gotten a fairly serious copywriting job and things like that. So I just decided to put it down in quite, what I can now see as like, quite a dramatic fashion, that I didn’t really need to be that all or nothing about it.

But, yeah, I kind of gave up for a bit.

 

Lucy

Yeah, I think I get you. I think I can be pretty all or nothing as well, myself.

Yeah, and it’s hard because I also write. It’s hard to kind of, when you know that you want to be a writer, what ‘career’ you’re going to have alongside that to supplement that.

 

Jem

If we’re giving craft advice and stuff like that, one of the first pieces of advice is, if people are really serious about writing, because I’ve worked a lot of manual jobs and practical jobs for a long time, and then making the move to a desk job, it is really useful to be able to have your work in a Google Doc or wherever you write, if you’re able to just sort of check in on your own writing a few times a day, even if it’s just like five or ten minutes here and there, I think that does, it kind of keeps the pace quite high.

And when I got into having office jobs and being able to, you know, on my lunch break, maybe just sit and work on some stuff, and kind of stopped being quite so all or nothing about it and just sort of accepted that work was a bit of an inevitability. And if you really want to pursue this, you’re going to have to… you kind of can’t take it lying down, and you have to put up a bit of resistance.

And so that was sort of when I started coming back to it. I think it linked quite closely with getting those types of jobs where I had access to an internet browser and not constant oversight from a boss over my shoulder.

 

Lucy

This might be a good time to ask you about if you have a writing routine. You’re saying you would dip in and out of it a little bit at work, or are you someone who starts early in the morning or writes in the evening?

 

Jem

Yeah, so I’m quite… I would never say this about myself, but enough people have said it about me, I’m quite disciplined, I suppose.

I wake up early every day and work for as long as I can. Then I’ll go to… so I have a kind of on-off relationship with work, actually. And luckily, things have gone pretty well with this last book where I think I’ll be able to take an extended period of time off work to work on a second novel, which is kind of what I’m setting up now.

But when I’m not doing that, it is really a case… yeah, I would get up at, like, six, work for two or three hours, then head to work. At work, I’d try and check in on my writing a few times, and then when I came home, keep on working.

So it really is… it’s kind of become something that I do with almost all of my free time, where, so long as I’m not around someone else, I’m probably working on my writing. But I would say I’m fairly… I have quite a lot I want to get done.

And so it’s just a case of trying to find the time when I can. It’s always a struggle to get that time.

 

Lucy

Yeah, I totally get what you mean, protecting your time is half of the challenge.

 

Jem

Yeah. And I also think one thing I would say is, when I say about being disciplined and putting a lot of time into it, that doesn’t actually mean I produce a lot of work. I’m a very slow writer, much slower than most other people I know.

And the way I tend to work is I produce one draft. So I go linearly, like from the very beginning to the very end in one go.

Again, because I know other writers who sort of do, you know, it seems like you’re kind of in one of two camps. You kind of do what I do, which is… it seems like there’s fewer of those, I will say. And a lot of other people seem to go through a sort of long drafting and redrafting process.

And I really don’t think there’s a right or wrong way. I think people do what works for them. But I will agonise over word by word. And sometimes a whole day will result in, like, half a line of keepable material for me. But I’m just very… I just don’t want to have to go back and sort of correct it at the end.

And also, one piece of advice I would give to listeners who are writing is that you have to really try not to get disheartened if you’re trying to begin a project.

For me, I’ve found, and just kind of accepted, that the process of beginning something takes me about 18 months. That’s how it went with my collection of short stories. That’s how it went with the novel I wrote. That’s how it’s going with this thing I’m working on. It’s just like it takes pretty much a year of just trying different things and none of it working.

But then you have to take solace in the fact that when something doesn’t work, and this also comes in on the sentence level as well, that, for me, is the closest I get to knowing what will work, is this kind of process of elimination.

I can tell when something is bad, and I’ll just kind of keep doing it in different ways, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, it’s still bad, it’s still bad,’ and I’ll try this different idea.

But then eventually, you know, you’ll have something that you don’t want to delete. And for me, it’s kind of stacking up those experiences and those sort of fragments of my writing. And once I’ve got enough of those together, these things that are so keepable to me that I just don’t want to get rid of, then I’ll be like, ‘Okay, this is the new project.’

So it kind of really does start from nothing.

 

Lucy

That’s really interesting to hear. I think now would be a good time to jump into specifically I Want You To Be Happy.

So you’re saying it took 18 months before you hit on the, like, the right starting note for that?

 

Jem

I think so, yeah. I think it was, I would say, between a year to 18 months. And again, it’s really difficult to say when something actually starts when you’re writing, because a lot of stuff… I’ll very often delete stuff and just put it in a separate file and be like, ‘I’m going to get to this later. I’ll come back to this.’

And I very, very rarely do, but it’s just much easier on my sort of conscience to be able… that’s kind of like the only way I’ll be able to let myself get rid of a piece of work that I’ve been working on for, you know, weeks or longer, is to just say, ‘Oh, I will actually come back to that.’

And I literally never do.

But yeah,  it was a long process of… I kind of had an idea of two characters and sort of how their relationship might work, but yeah, it was just trying, trying different things. It is just this really lengthy process of elimination.

I mean, I was also trying to write a completely different novel for a bit of time. You know, you just have to keep iterating through versions of things that don’t work.

But yeah, I would say it took at least a year for the structure of I Want You To Be Happy to become clear, and the two characters.

The novel pretty much just exists between two characters who are in this relationship. We follow them from when they first meet to across the next few months in their lives after they’ve met.

And I’m always, like, quite conscious… I’m always self-conscious about how it comes across. But, like, I suppose you do need to sort of get to know the characters a bit and understand what’s going through their head and understand the things that the characters aren’t aware of that the reader will be aware of about the character, you know, and sort of figure that out. You know, the same way real people… you know, like, I could look at my friend and be like, ‘Oh, he’s dealing with this,’  and he might not even be aware of that.

In fact, I think life is often that way, where someone, an external person, in this case a reader, will be able to kind of see what’s going on with you.

And I really like that, actually. I really like me and the reader being in sort of communication, and the character kind of off doing their own thing.

 

Lucy

Yeah, I remember once going to a talk by an author, I think it might have been Elizabeth McNeil, and it really struck me, because I don’t relate to this at all, when she said she doesn’t really get that emotionally attached to her characters, and she sees them more as kind of like vessels for the storytelling.

I’d be really interested to know, how emotionally attached you feel to Joey and Chuck, or do you think of them as vessels for portraying something else?

 

Jem

That’s interesting.

I definitely don’t think of them as vessels for portraying something. No, I kind of regard them as, like, fully existent human beings, to be honest with you, which, of course, they are patently not. They are literally just things I’ve come up… I suppose I did really try and divide different parts of my personality between the two characters, to the extent where, like, sometimes I was making decisions about, like, ‘Oh, I kind of think this,’ and then I would be like, ‘Oh, that’s more of a Joey thought,’ you know?

So I would kind of… I do feel like there’s a lot of myself in each of them. I’d say each of the characters is, like, 50% me and then 50% themselves, but, yeah, I do get very emotionally attached to the characters.

And I know that the characters aren’t always particularly likeable, but that’s still… I’m fine with that, because to me, that means, okay, but at least you’re getting the sort of, like, honest experience of what this person’s interiority is like.

And if you reject that, that’s fine. Like, I frequently am kind of repulsed by the things that happen in the book, but they’re kind of, like, humanity, and just the fact that they feel really real is very, very important to me.

 

Lucy

They definitely feel real. I think maybe it might be nice if we talk about them. Maybe start with Joey and then go to Chuck.

I really liked Joey. I found her quite relatable. And I think of her as quite an anxious person. Arguably, she’s got an awful lot to be anxious about. Was that what you set out to write?

 

Jem

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, for me, like, she is really a reflection of me when I was 23 and the sort of people I knew at that age. I’m much closer to Chuck’s age now.

And when you’re that age, and it’s not a comment on sort of a person’s value or the fact that they’re doing anything wrong, but I think when you are in your early twenties, you just feel like you have so much to prove, and you’ve done so little of what you want to do that you kind of…

My sort of feelings of first moving to London in my early 20s are like, you’re just very helpless and kind of looking for community and trying to find like-minded people. That can be a very difficult experience.

And then you’re also balancing that with working for what is probably a lower-paid job than you’re ever going to work for the rest of your life, hopefully. But it doesn’t seem like that’s always the case.

So, for me, it was kind of like this profound anxiety and sort of someone trying to figure out, you know, who really they are and using another person to facilitate some of that self-discovery, the way that I think a lot of people do when they’re in their early 20s.

And yeah, if you move somewhere new, you date people, you meet people, and kind of, form your personality in reaction to that.

So one of the ideas with Joey, she kind of… I guess she’s lived in London longer than… you know, she’s not new there, but, yeah, it’s just this idea of the struggle to find your place, and land on the ground. That was one of the big concerns I had with her, and so trying to make sure she found something like that.

 

Lucy

Yeah, definitely. I found Joey really interesting, and something I thought about her was that she seems to want to find a home, which is why I personally felt she went for Chuck. He provides access to this stability to a degree and access to indulgences and luxuries that feel a world away for her right now.

Could you talk a little bit about what you think it is about Joey that draws her to Chuck?

 

Jem

I think it’s a feeling of insecurity. And I suppose this is one of the other things that I remember from when I was 23, is, you are kind of like… and again, this isn’t a judgment, but I think there can be a part of you like, ‘I don’t feel very, like, accurately represented by the people around me, and I feel different.’

And it’s not like I feel smarter or more interesting, but you’re like, ‘I just feel like my concerns are a bit more, a bit more complicated than what I’m seeing other people do around me,’ and really wanting someone to recognise that.

And I think that, for her, when Chuck comes along, he’s someone who does validate that view of herself. It can be quite painful because you also see in the novel that Joey sees a lot of her friends getting these kind of, like, cool media careers or, like, arts-related careers, and she’s working in the service industry, which I spent a lot of time doing.

And it’s just a difficult place to be and feel it. And I think people who want to write tend to relate to that as well, which is, you know where you should be, but it’s really unclear how you get there.

And so meeting someone who respects her as an intellectual peer, because I think she’s a very smart woman, that is very validating and perhaps actually a bit too validating when, you know, we actually become less sure as the novel goes on, how much Chuck respects some of that ambition that Joey has, or believes in it.

 

Lucy

I hadn’t actually thought of that, of how, he represents, in a way, the future she wants to have, if he’s technically writing for a living, even if it’s not the kind of writing that she wants to do.

I find the power dynamic between Chuck and Joey really interesting as well.

 

Jem

It’s an interesting one.

I love literary fiction, obviously; that’s the type of book I like to read. But I’m also interested in shifting dynamics and imbalances between people, and how people try and communicate across and around problems that they have with the person they’re communicating with.

So I guess I’m saying, like, I always like there to be a problem. And I always like the ground to be kind of shifting. I think that’s what keeps the writing interesting.

I suppose some people would say that’s like conflict, but I don’t think it always needs to be that there’s some problem that needs to be solved. It’s just the communication itself is the problem. Like, no real communication is happening.

I think probably that was a part of why I felt energised when I started to write this novel, as it’s one of those things that’s in the cultural conversation as well. I feel like every five or so years, there’s always a big conversation about age-gap relationships, and people vent their different feelings about it.

And I think ultimately, there are just very different types of relationship, and it’s very hard to speak in generalities. But I kind of wanted to almost blur my eyes a bit and portray something like a shape of a relationship that I’d seen occurring a few times around me.

And yeah, that’s where the dynamic between the two of them started.

 

Lucy

Yeah, that is really interesting. And I think, because he is that little bit older, it’s a kind of slight generational jump in terms of that.

So would you say Chuck and Joey arrived as a couple for you, or did one of them come before the other in your head?

 

Jem

No, there was never one without the other, to be honest.

And it was only when I got about halfway through the writing process, I think, that I became more interested. And I feel like that’s kind of how the novel goes as well, as they’re quite closely intertwined at first, and then we start to experience a bit more time with them.

So I think they did come to me pretty much all in one go. I think, kind of what we were saying in the previous question, it really was the dynamic and recognising that I have some unreconciled parts of myself on some level, where I do still feel caught between those two characters and the way they feel.

You know, Chuck is very cynical, and he knows how he likes things, and he kind of has this idea of the life he wants to live, and to some extent, he’s willing to sacrifice things to achieve that. But I think ultimately he’s a pretty cynical guy.

And then Joey just has… she’s more open to the world and to things happening around her.

And I think part of when the two characters, I decided to start writing about them, was me trying to kind of reconcile… you know, where on that divide do I fit? And, you know, what are the beliefs I have?

I suppose, you know, the characters were a way of interrogating myself because I’m actually… maybe it doesn’t sound that believable, but I’m actually not the most introspective person in the world, probably because I put a lot of energy into my writing, to be honest, that I don’t actually spend too much time thinking about what I think about things.

Yeah, so I suppose I was sort of trying to, like, uncover a bit of a mystery there and sort of figure out myself between them.

But also, just to caveat that, I will say that they also did feel very different to me in a lot of ways, and they had their own thought processes that aren’t mine, you know? Like, very similar to mine in a lot of ways, but, like, they’ll kind of zigzag in ways that I zigzag in other ways.

And that was always really fun to do, when I twigged something that they were thinking or something that they would do. That was always really satisfying.

 

Lucy

I think for Chuck in particular, initially, he’s just a fascinating character throughout, but I hope you don’t mind me saying that I really didn’t like him by the end of the book.

He feels to me like a bit of a representation of this epidemic of avoidant people we have out here at the moment.

He’s scared to make commitments to romantic relationships and he is quite introspective. But he is also, yeah, it’s like he’s introspective, but he’s emotionally avoidant.

What is it like kind of rendering that inner world and getting information across to a reader about a character while the character in themselves doesn’t really want to look inward?

 

Jem

It’s quite difficult, as it happens.

 

Lucy

Yeah, it doesn’t sound easy.

 

Jem

That was one thing I knew was going to be a challenge going into this. I would say, Chuck more than Joey, but the characters are, like, fairly isolated. And that’s, like, different.

I would say Joey has more of a social life. She has more people she hangs out with, and those sort of interactions were always really fun to write. But the difficulty with Chuck is I knew he was going to live a lot in his own head.

So I was going to have to really think hard about how I portrayed that. And I also… it was difficult because I also agree, there’s not a lot of interrogating himself, but he does sort of… he’s hung up on a lot of things and he ruminates a lot.

But I also find it… I’m not the biggest fan of sort of extended flashbacks in novels and things like that. It’s only a personal preference, and there are also plenty of great novels that do this, and I would really enjoy reading them.

But I just think, in general, I always feel like it’s a bit of a detour when a novel sort of goes in and describes a memory at length. I’m always much more interested in what’s happening in the present.

So what I would do is, with Chuck, I paid really close attention to how he would live his life and what he would do. And I was always trying to kind of describe that in the funniest way I could, honestly.

And then, like, very occasionally, there’ll be these kind of bursts of, you know, memory, or he reads an email from, or, you know, a message from someone from his past. So I was always really conscious that he lived mostly in his head, but actually he still lives in the physical world.

And I needed to address the way he lives in the physical world because that, to me, it’s also just more fun to describe. And I kind of think more fun to read. And I knew I was going to have to use… I was going to have to illuminate his thought processes very carefully.

I think keeping some of those insights so spare throughout the novel makes them land harder and resonate when they do. So you actually feel like you’re drawn quite a bit closer to him in these moments of revelation.

One of the things I always do when I start a new writing project is I, you know, have all this backstory and all this thinking, and all the characters have known each other for this long, but this is happening. And I’m always trying to get that all across in the first chapter.

And I realised actually that all I’m doing is killing a lot of the momentum by over-explaining in the short term. And then also a lot of these conflicts would be more interesting if they were drawn out and only highlighted when they come to a head and we get that kind of revelation.

So that was really important. And actually in my edits from Faber, there were a couple of moments, not huge things, but just in the last chapter of the book, there’s something on the first page of the last chapter where one of the characters has changed their job.

And originally the first line of that chapter stated that, and actually their advice to me was to move that, like, a page later. And I think it works so much nicer like that, and that little insight from them in the edit, I’ve kind of taken forward with me, and I’m like, actually, a bit of delayed gratification does go a long way.

And because I always struggle with the impulse of, like, okay, the reader’s working their way through this sequentially. I want to get all the fun stuff in at the beginning, but it’s actually just a case of overcrowding it.

 

Lucy

Yeah, it’s the distribution of information is always the hardest part.

 

Jem

Yes, absolutely.

And one note I always make to myself is, like, if something I’m doing is starting to lag and to feel a bit baggy. Like, it’s a really basic note, but I always think to myself, like, I have to keep the rate at which key information is being delivered higher.

I almost think of it as, like, a speedometer, and it’s like, okay, that actually needs to be pushing up now because we’ve gone so… you know, we’ve slackened so much in the last scene.

And you can’t have, like, pedal to the metal in terms of constantly just giving these big insights and revelations. But I think you need to keep that balance, and you need to be aware that the reader’s attention is on a sliding scale.

And, you know, it’s not your job to constantly keep… you know, to be like a TikTok and just relentlessly capture attention and do the lowest common denominator thing that you know is going to get them reading. There’s no art in that.

But it is your job to kind of, like, pay close attention to, like, okay, we’ve had two scenes in a row of kind of, like, internal, you know, like, things like that, and we need to kind of, like, expand out.

Like, I think I always really try and keep the reader in mind a lot, probably too much to some extent. Like, it kind of pains me how much I think about them, but yeah.

 

Lucy

Yeah, I remember you saying earlier that you come at your novels chronologically, right? That is almost from the reader’s perspective, isn’t it?

 

Jem

Yeah, that’s really true.

Yeah, I’m always really, really focused on the reader. And it’s actually, it’s funny when I say that, because I’m not really imagining it, I suppose I’m just imagining another version of myself that is just picking this up and approaching this from the outside.

 

Lucy

I also wanted to ask you about writing about writing, because I think that writing is something that’s so important to both Chuck and Joey, and I think it forms… I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler in the book to say that it forms a real catalyst in their relationship.

How did you find writing about writers, and what maybe do you think it means separately to Joey and to Chuck?

 

Jem

That’s a really great question. I really like that you’ve asked that question.

At the beginning of the process, I kind of knew that I wanted the characters to be writers, but different people respond differently to that. And I have seen some stuff about, like, ‘Oh, people are sick of reading about writers.’

But I actually think if you read literary fiction, chances are you’ve either tried to write yourself or you think about writing a lot, and it’s a medium you enjoy. You know, like, I think if you’re picking up this novel, you have enough interest in the writing process and the identities of people who are writers that you probably won’t be put off by it.

I was really struggling with that for a while, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to write about writers. Like, that does put me in a really tight box.’ But then what clicked in my head is, I was like, ‘Actually, I am writing about writers, but I’m writing about amateur writers, and I’m writing about people who are writing for the first time and trying to discover things.’

And after that, I stopped worrying about it because I was like, ‘Actually, I think a huge amount of people can relate to this.’ And these aren’t two writers who are, like, A-level, you know, who… that is, like, beyond anything really that your regular reader of literary fiction won’t have experienced, which is, like, ‘Oh, I’ve tried to write some things myself. Some of it’s been good. Some of it’s been bad.’

So after that, I kind of let myself off the hook. And I do think people have responded well to that. So that’s been really nice.

And one more thing as well… yeah, I just do think that if you read literary fiction, chances are you’re interested in the way that it’s produced and the world in which the writer exists, and is that the regular world? You know, like, there’s just… I’ve always been interested in that.

You know, I suppose kind of that’s also a bit the nature of this podcast, so I’m talking to the right people about it.

But in terms of the two characters’ relationships to their writing, I would say Chuck has kind of this more entitled sense. He kind of thinks of himself as, like, this thwarted, like… it’s so… I don’t want to parody him, but it is this kind of like… he’s very, very overly confident in his abilities.

And there’s a line where it’s something like he… he’s so sure that he’ll be good at writing that he never even bothers to try, because it’s like, he’s just… he’s almost feels like he’s achieved it. He’s that confident.

Whereas Joey is much more… you know, regards it as kind of a craft that is really closely tied to her.

Yeah, I feel like spirituality is the wrong word, but it is this, like, quite… it’s more important to her than anything else. And she’s very private about it and takes great care with it.

And I think ultimately, actually, you have to have a bit of both in order to be productive and kind of, you know, finish work.

Yeah. I kind of set them up a bit as sort of not quite opposites, but, you know, like, they’re a real contrast in the way they feel about their writing.

 

Lucy

I really enjoyed seeing that contrast, and they feel almost like opposite ends of a spectrum.

But I also found it interesting in terms of how their power dynamic shifts around it. It’s like, again, without wishing to spoil the novel too much, it’s almost like Joey has potential in her writing career that maybe Chuck feels that he is past or is starting to get past.

 

Jem

Yeah, I think it’s tough.

I think probably the way I would address that, you know, almost as in hindsight, because this wasn’t necessarily what I was thinking at the time, but it’s like… I think ultimately the difference is really humility.

And I think, like, you have to be very… like, I never talk about my writing with anyone I know, really. Like, I just think it’s really good to kind of, like, approach it with an almost minimalist attitude.

I mean, you know, like, it’s taken over my life. It is what I do all the time. But equally, like, I try not to be too…

I think you’re really setting yourself up to fail if you think your writing is going to be able to do everything and kind of, like, solve everyone’s problem and represent everything. I think it’s always going to be flawed. It’s not going to be for everyone.

And I think when you kind of start to accept that, then you lean into your strengths more and kind of realize what you can do.

I think both the characters are at kind of different levels of that. I think Joey definitely has a lot of, like, humility and is kind of willing to… yeah, I suppose what I mean by humility is, like, a willingness to learn and to accept that you haven’t quite mastered the form.

Because that’s one of the things I’m always interested in: why a writer who feels like they are at the height of their powers, why would you carry on going if you think you can… you know, if you kind of feel fully in control of what you do?

You know, like, the whole… it’s really painful, and you wish you could just sit down and, like, force the thoughts to be really good, but ultimately it kind of has to come as a surprise.

And if you could force the surprise, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

You can really bash your head against the wall, but ultimately that means probably, like, something good is coming.

 

Lucy

Yeah, being a writer is always being open to learning, I like that.

 

Jem

Yeah, there’s a guitarist called John Fahey, and I’ve read an interview with him. He’s dead now, but he was a country folk guitarist.

But he said, like, he talked about keeping an open subconscious. Someone asked him, like, what his process is, and he said, ‘I just practice and try and keep an open subconscious.’

And I think that’s the goal, really. It’s like, just regard everything you do as, like, practicing and an attempt. And I would never put the terms on myself that this has to be the thing because I think as soon as you do that, for me, sort of anything that might be interesting about it starts to go away because it becomes a job.

And then I think that open subconscious thing is really important. It’s just, like, you have to be waiting for some level of surprise.

And that can be anything. Like, for me, very often it’s at a sentence level where just, like, some new way… you know, the way I thought I was going to communicate this to… there’s a shorter way, or there’s a funnier way, or I can actually split this over two lines.

You know, like, so I’m not actually talking in particularly lofty terms, but I just think over time, if you have enough instances of that kind of, like, strange or very personalised technique, that is what readers really respond to.

And, like, in terms of writers getting your stuff read by agents and picked up out of the slush pile, that, in my experience with other writers I’ve seen, tends to be the stuff that people get really excited by.

 

Lucy

Just to finish off I would love to hear if you’ve got any tips for our listeners on writing convincing relationships?

 

Jem

I mean, it will be harder than you think to do because it seems like something that’s quite straightforward and everyone’s had a relationship, but kind of, it’s one of those things where, as soon as you start, then so many questions come in and you’re like, well, how did they end up here? Why do they like this?

And you have to try not to throw in the kitchen sink and over-explain everything. That’s a big thing that I had to figure out early, was how to use the minimum possible number of scenes to portray what I wanted to portray. Otherwise, you end up repeating yourself a lot.

But I think it really is helpful to kind of, like… okay, yeah, here’s one. Here’s one. You can get so in your head about, like, oh, this and then this character would do this, and this would do that, and their motivation to do that.

And over time, if you do that too much, you can actually end up getting to some quite contrived territory. So I really would ask yourself constantly: what would I do? How would I reply if I was being spoken to this way? What would I think if someone had done this? Why would I do that?

And then from there you’ll be able to kind of, like, reframe your thinking through the character’s mind. Do you know what I mean?

It’s like, in a weird way, I think people have a tendency to kind of almost step too far out of their own writing and be like, ‘Well, this character…’ Actually, I think everyone thinks relatively similarly.

And a lot of the anxieties are located differently, and the concerns and worries are located differently and dispersed differently in that relationship. But ultimately, you can have faith that your own perspective is enough and will be interesting.

And you get the fun job of being able to kind of pick and choose the parts that go into the different personalities in this relationship.

I think what would really be my advice, is, like, don’t ever get too far from your own feelings and from how you would respond and what you would think about and say in these scenes, because authenticity is really what you’re shooting for here.

You know, if you’re writing something that’s mostly about relationships, and I think, you know, a big part of it feeling authentic is that it’s relatable and that your reader will read it and be like, ‘Yeah, I would probably say that too,’ or, ‘I would think something like that.’

So never try and go too far out on a limb in terms of, like, really trying to set up these huge arguments where the characters would take completely opposite… It really needs to be plausible more than everything.

But then the good news is that once you’ve achieved a kind of baseline of plausibility, then you can really start to do a lot more and start to raise the bar in that relationship and raise the stakes.

I hope that’s a good answer.

 

Lucy

Yeah, I think it’s great. Don’t get too tangled up in the, like, macro overview of what you’re doing. Spend time emotionally in the moment.

That’s really nice. What can we look out from you next?

 

Jem

I have some… some non-fiction stuff for some newspaper, I think, that’s coming out over the summer, so keep an eye out for that.

And then, yeah, I’m working on Novel Two at the moment. And, yeah, hopefully there should be an announcement at some point.

But yeah.

 

Lucy

That’s exciting.

I also just wanted to say that I actually found out about this book from a different podcast. The host recommended it to all of the listeners of her podcast, and I feel like I’ve come a full circle moment now of, like, hearing about it on a podcast and then coming back now.

 

Jem

On, wow. Amazing. Who was the podcast?

 

Lucy

If I Speak with Ash Sarkar

 

Jem

Really, really cool.

 

Lucy

Thank you everybody for listening to this episode of The Writing Life and I hope you enjoy I Want You To Be Happy. You should definitely go and read it.